Indo asia dating

The transformation of consonants from parent to daughter languages may be illustrated by the word "cow" in English and Kuh in German; in Sanskrit the word for "ox" is ganh, and in Greek it is bous All have long been recognized as descending from a common Indo-European word for "ox," or "cow." The word has different forms, however, in the glottalic and classical systems.In the glottalic it has the voiceless consonant *k' Wou- (the asterisk before a word designates it as a word in the protolanguage), which makes it phonetically closer to the corresponding words in English and German than to those in Greek and Sanskrit.In the scheme we have developed, the corresponding consonants are sounded with a glottalized stop: a closure of the throat at the vocal cords that prevents the outward flow of breath.Here the voiceless labial stop ("p"') appears suppressed, followed by "t"' and "k'." As ("p"') is to ("b"), voiceless and voiced, respectively, so "t"'is to "d" and "k"'is to "g." Glottalized stops occur in many different language families, particularly those of northern Caucasian and southern Caucasian ( Kartvelian ) provenance.Here we analyze data from about 60 South Asian groups to estimate that major ANI-ASI mixture occurred 1,200-4,000 years ago.Some mixture may also be older--beyond the time we can query using admixture linkage disequilibrium--since it is universal throughout the subcontinent: present in every group speaking Indo-European or Dravidian languages, in all caste levels, and in primitive tribes.The Indo-European words for "barley," "wheat" and "flax"; for "apples," "cherries" and their trees, for "mulberries" and their bushes; for "grapes" and their vines; and for the various implements with which to cultivate and harvest them describe a way of life unknown in northern Europe until the third or second millennium B.C., when the first archaeological evidence appears.

This neatly reverses the classical conception that the former languages had undergone a systematic sound shift, whereas Sanskrit had faithfully conserved the original sound system.

Traditionally, it had been thought that "b" was the suppressed consonant.

Subsequent studies in phonology indicated, however, that if one of the three labial consonants is lacking in a language, it is least likely to be the one sounded as "b" in English and other living European languages.

The glottalized stop—which hardens a consonant—tends to weaken and disappear in most languages of the world.

So we surmised that—among the labial stops—it was the "p"'rather than the "b" that most likely had been suppressed in the Indo-European pro t o language .